graduate in the Harvard College and Medical School.

The lady was Alice Duvernois: her name was all that was known of her in
the village--it was all that she had told of herself. Only a month
previous to the scene above described she had arrived in Northport to
obtain, as she said, a summer of quiet and sea-bathing. She had come
alone, engaged her own rooms, and for a time seemed to want nothing but
solitude.

Even after she had made herself somewhat familiar with the other inmates
of the boarding-house, nothing positive was learned of her history. That
she had been married was probable: an indefinable something in her face
and carriage seemed to reveal thus much: moreover, her trunks were marked
"James Duvernois."

And yet, so young did she sometimes look, so childlike was her smile and
so simple her manner, that there were curious ones who scouted the
supposition of wifehood. People addressed her both as "Miss" and "Mrs.";
at last it was discovered that her letters bore the latter title: then she
became popularly known as "the beautiful widow."

It would be a waste of time to sketch the opening and ripening of the
intimacy between Doctor Leighton and this fascinating stranger. On his
part it was as nearly a case of love at first sight as perhaps can occur
among people of the Anglo-Saxon race. From the beginning he had no doubts
about giving her his whole heart: he was mastered at once by an emotion
which would not let him hesitate: he longed with all his soul for her
soul, and he strove to win it.

Well, we will not go over the story: we know that he had triumphed. Yes,
in spite of her terror of the future, in spite of some withholding mystery
in the past, she had granted him--or rather she had not been able to
prevent him from seizing--her passionate affection. She had uttered a
promise which, a month before, she would not have dreamed herself capable
of making.

In so doing she had acquired an almost unendurable happiness. It was one
of those mighty and terrible joys which are like the effect of opium--one
of those joys which condense life and abbreviate it, which excite and yet
stupefy, which intoxicate and kill. With this in her heart she lived ten
of her old days in one, but also she drew for those ten days upon her
future.

After one of her interviews with Leighton, after an hour of throbbing, of
trembling, of vivid but confused emotions, her face would be as pale as
death, and her weakness such that she